JUBA, Oct. 15 (Xinhua) -- South Sudan on Monday opened its second edition of the Made-in-South Sudan Exhibition aimed at promoting locally-made products and open up the country's investment opportunities. Paul Mayom Akech, Minister of Trade, Industry and East African Community Affairs said this year's event focuses on exposing the country's agriculture and manufacturing potentials in a bid to reduce dependence on imports. Akech said the government seeks to boost South Sudan's manufacturing sector through enacting laws to safeguard investors and the local consumers. "Our immediate task is to enhance policies that will safeguard the producer and the consumer. Engage with financial institutions to provide resources to this local business groups, find them market outside South Sudan and make conditions of export easier for them," Aketch said. The event which brought together over 50 exhibitors is supported by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and it will run until Oct. 20. Participants are drawn from sectors such as agriculture, construction, cosmetics, beverages, electronics, textiles, banking and insurance among others. South Sudan depends on oil revenue for over 90 percent of its budget, but production reduced significantly due to civil war that erupted in December 2013, causing most oilfields in the country's oil-rich northern region to shut down. The east African nation is currently struggling with hyper inflation amid shortage of foreign reserves to support its import-dependent economy. Enditem Source China

A push by Tanzania and Uganda to have their own tea auction could destabilise incomes, coming at a time that production and prices in the region have been falling. Last week, Tanzania said it was planning its own tea auction in Dar es Salaam. Uganda had in March this year, said it was planning to market its own tea directly to buyers as it sought better prices, effectively pulling out of the Mombasa auction, the second largest in the world, after Colombo. Kampala has since rescinded the decision. Kenyan tea industry players, however, believe that the two countries’ push for another auction outside Mombasa, which serves the region, with offerings from at least 10 countries as far afield as Madagascar, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo, is infeasible due to low volumes from those two markets. Uganda’s concerns emanate from what it says is loss of identity of its tea once it enters the Mombasa auction, as it is labelled as Kenyan. “Once our tea is exported through Mombasa, it loses identity because it lacks the proper packaging. This means it inherits Kenya as the origin in the export market, losing its identity to the advantage of Kenya,” said Othieno Odoi a, senior planner in charge of trade at Uganda’s National Planning Authority. Mr Odoi added that the country is yet to complete the feasibility study that would determine whether the market would be viable for a Kampala auction. “We are also tied down by some challenges, including transportation....

It is quite telling that presently, the port of Mombasa is losing a chunk of Rwanda’s business to Dar es Salaam. Granted, one reason for this is the short distance from Tanzania’s port into Rwanda but the second and most important reason is the improved efficiency of Dar’s port that has seen businesses move their goods faster and with significantly less administrative hassle. The correlation between functioning ports and local economic advancement is undisputed – both regionally and globally. Ports act as key entryways for international trade and are, therefore, very vital for the movement of goods, services and people between continents, spurring the integration of local and national economies into the global sphere. In this regard, it is also easy to see why ports and industries are linked. For many countries, ports were developed to support local economic activities during the early stages of industrialisation. But due to technological advances and the expansion of markets and trading activities across the world, the need for ports to equally advance in order to support these demands has become greater. Kenya, for instance, has an ambitious target to grow its manufacturing sector to 15 per cent of GDP by 2022, which translates to a 36 per cent year-on-year sector growth rate. In order to do this, we need to grow our export markets and at the same time ensure that the local industries are operating at full capacity thereby enabling them to produce quality goods to meet the local demand. Local industries Ports...

In March 2018, African heads of State gathered in Kigali to launch an initiative that will increase the level of intra African trade. The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) points out that the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is a move in the right direction for the continent, as it will cover a market of 1.2 billion people and a gross domestic product (GDP) of $2.5 trillion, across all 55 member States of the African Union. In terms of numbers of participating countries, AfCFTA will be the world’s largest free trade area since the formation of the World Trade Organisation. Considering that informal cross border trade (ICBT) is a source of income to about 43 per cent of Africa’s population, boosting informal cross border trade on the continent is an integral part of achieving sustainable development. Further, small and medium-sized enterprises account for around 80 per cent of the region’s businesses. UNECA also indicates that women are estimated to account for around 70 per cent of informal cross border traders in Africa and are exposed to challenges such as harassment, violence, confiscation of goods and even imprisonment. By and large, ICBT is largely practised by the officially unemployed and micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises, and is therefore also important for strategies of inclusion. An example of an intervention that is worth mentioning is one by TradeMark Africa (TMA) in a project in Rwanda aimed at increasing the economic power of women in informal cross-border trade. The project...

Fourth G20 Summit that saw over 55 heads of delegation attend came to close on Friday after a two-day meeting on the sidelines of IMF and the World Bank annual meetings with Argentine Minister of Treasury Nicolás Dujovne underscoring the progress made by member states. “We have discussed the outlook of the global economy, which remains positive, while global growth projections remain steady. However, the expansion has become less even across economies, and some of the downside risks that were discussed earlier in the year are starting to materialize,” Dujovne held. Dujovne said that monetary policy was normalizing in advanced economies while emerging ones were experiencing rigid financial conditions while other markets were experiencing market instabilities. The representatives from the G20 agreed to cooperate so as to sustain global financial stability. He said, “We agreed that international trade is an important engine of growth, and we need to resolve tensions which can negatively affect market sentiment and increase financial volatility.” 20 finance ministers, 17 central bank governors and 10 heads of international organizations attended the occasion in Bali, Indonesia which was chaired by Nicolás Dujovne, Argentine Minister of Finance and Verónica Rappoport, Second Vice-president of the Argentine Central Bank. IMF managing director Christine Lagarde and Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank Group also attended the conference where discussions on threats to global economy, trade tensions and financial susceptibilities took place. Before the close on Friday, discussions around developing infrastructure as an asset class took place to promote private...

After decades of unabated downturn, rail transport is steadily bouncing back, thanks to technological innovation, a shift in management approaches and effects of climate change. This has seen increased sensitisation on environmental issues. But in Africa, this renaissance has encountered some bottlenecks, owing to inadequate government commitment in some countries. The African Development Bank (AfDB), in its 2015 report titled Rail Infrastructure in Africa: Financing Policy Options, said Africa is experiencing an unprecedented economic recovery, with strong growth projections over the next three to four decades. According to the report, the growth was driven by a fast-growing demographic and large-scale urbanisation. The operation of new mines, gas and oil fields, as well as the increase in intra-regional and international trade, were additional growth factors. Notably, the transport sector can accelerate and intensify trade in Africa. Rail transport, in particular, as a result of its energy efficiency, reduced greenhouse gas emissions and lower cost per tonen kilometre, is expected to play an increasingly important role in the conveyance of freight over long distances. In comparison to other means of transportation, railways are particularly useful in mass transit systems for both inter-city and urban settings. Investment But even as Africa becomes more and more attractive as a destination for infrastructure financing in many sectors such as energy, telecoms and transportation, investment in railways is still small compared with other sectors. This calls for more institutional reforms and more mature financial markets to up-scale the implementation of new approaches to infrastructure finance commonly...

The government is banking on digitising more small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to boost productivity and spur economic growth. Speaking during Jumia Kenya’s 2018 Black Friday launch event, Trade Principal Secretary Chris Kiptoo said the national economy depends a lot on  SMEs which currently contribute up to 25 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) and employing 70 per cent of the workforce. The PS further said it is possible to leverage the power of online retailers such as Jumia to help bridge trade deficit with other countries. “Our trade policy has underscored the role of e-commerce in Kenya’s economic development. Let us appreciate private sector efforts such as Jumia, geared towards providing a platform for trade promotion and increasing exports through digitisation,” Kiptoo said. “Making SMEs successful is at the heart of the government’s Big Four agenda on creating jobs for the youth,” he added. More than 10,000 SMEs are already selling on the Jumia e-commerce platform with others planning to join during this year’s Jumia Black Friday sales extravaganza which will kick next month. During the launch, Jumia announced that it is planning to increase its vendor base to 15,000 by 2019. “We plan to invest significantly in training for small and medium size businesses in 2019,” said Jumia’s managing director Sam Chappatte. “Through this we hope to continue playing a part in the digitisation of the economy and job creation, and to support the government’s Big Four agenda on youth employment,” he said. Chappatte said this...

After decades of unabated downturn, rail transport is steadily bouncing back, thanks to technological innovation, a shift in management approaches and the effects of climate change, which have seen increased sensitisation on environmental issues. This renaissance has encountered some bottlenecks, owing to inadequate government commitment in some countries. The African Development Bank, in its 2015 report Rail Infrastructure in Africa: Financing Policy Options, says Africa is experiencing an unprecedented economic recovery, with strong growth projections over the next three to four decades. According to the report, the growth is driven by a fast-growing demographic and large-scale urbanisation. The operation of new mines, gas and oil fields, as well as the increase in intra-regional and international trade, are additional growth factors. Notably, the transport sector can accelerate and intensify trade in Africa. Rail transport, in particular, as a result of its energy efficiency, reduced greenhouse gas emissions and lower cost per tonne kilometre, is expected to play an increasingly important role in the conveyance of freight over long distances. But even as Africa becomes more and more attractive as a destination for infrastructure financing in many sectors such as energy, telecoms and transportation, investment in railways is still small compared to other sectors. This calls for more institutional reforms and mature financial markets to up-scale the implementation of new approaches to infrastructure finance commonly found in developed countries such as project bonds. In Kenya, the standard gauge railway, a flagship project of Vision 2030, financed by the China Exim Bank, has already...

You are in the tech industry. What opportunities can East Africa leverage from the sector? I firmly believe the time is now for East Africa to really leapfrog and catch up with other parts of the developing world, and the way to do that is with digitisation. Digitisation, especially if it is done properly, the one benefit you get out of all that is trust. When you have trust in the data that you are collecting, that you are storing, that you are analysing and you are using to make decisions then you have a much better chance of ensuring a more favourable outcome. One of the biggest problems of businesses, whether they are East African or international, is the lack of trust about doing business in Africa. They [investors] cannot trust that the money that they are putting into these countries is going to be used properly, effectively, and that they are going to get returns they expect. Therefore, it is so much easier to move your money to a different part of the world and, as I said, we can raise our trust levels once we start using technology to capture everything digitally. Do you have specific examples of how this can happen?  One technology, I think, is going to take us to the next era of digitisation is blockchain. Blockchain is a technology that allows you to store data about a transaction in multiple places simultaneously in a ledger so multiple people can have information simultaneously about...

When I joined a group of East African journalists for a regional media tour which started at the East African Community (EAC) headquarters in Arusha, I had no idea of the dire situation we would find in Burundi. We were 10 on the journey that would take us through Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and end in Burundi. Three were from Kenya, another three from Uganda, one each from South Sudan and Rwanda and two from Burundi. While in Kigali, after touring the other three countries, a Kenyan friend I had gone to school with and who works as an architect there asked me: “So where are you going after Kigali?” “Bujumbura (capital of Burundi), which is our final destination,” I answered, looking forward to my first time there. He looked surprised, and asked: “What are you going to do there?”, in a way that implied the country was not worth visiting. Alarmed Know if news is factual and true. Text 'NEWS' to 22840 and always receive verified news updates. I brushed off his qualms. But earlier, a few pointers had alarmed me before I even got to Kigali. While in Kampala, the two Burundian journalists who work for the State broadcaster, got a call from their editors ordering them not to step into Rwanda. Their journey of the region ended in Uganda and they took a flight home. Later in Kigali, the Rwandese reporter told us that he would not be joining us in Bujumbura, again having received orders from his...